You infected me with your voice
Your voice became psychedelic soap bubbles swirling on my eyes
You see my reality, clearer
My eyes through You.
Are You voyeur
Stalker, spy,
Observer?
Is this some rite, religious, pagan or passage?!
Or is Your voice a siren song that has captured
Me in some fairy glamour enchantment, for some reason.
What have you done?
Kidnapped
Hijacked
Abducted
You have not taken me
I am free to live my life here.
There was no gun in my face
I generally live my life with little threat.
There was no duct tape
Yet You have abducted my eyes.
There is no physical contact
Mind meld, mind control, hypnotizing.
Your voice knows i am here
But i know Your voice is awash on my eyes
Just the faintest rainbows wheeling.
So: voyeur or observer?
Basically, the same
But not basically the same
A voyeur is active
An Observer is passive
(I will not argue this with anyone who is a pedantic linguist).
A voyeur can have multiple purposes.
An observer has one simple task:
Observe.
If you are an observer,
There are a lot of “Whos and Hows”
I need answers to.
Where are you from?
What kind of instrument is this?
When did you get here?
I do and do not feel violated
But there has to be a reason.
Your beautiful voice has infected me.
You will have answers.
I must find you again.
My curiosity needs to be assuaged
And would know your voice
Anywhere.
Death’s Tattoo
The clouds do not rain
Still, melt the paper sun.
A paper moon will hide above
The dry clouds withered and grey as
An old man waiting in the living room
For a knock on the door.
He knows who and why.
When?
When, he doesn’t know or care
But he knows soon ,
He can feel the slow drain of self.
How?
No one has lived to tell.
He will not sleep
A sombre curiosity wants to hear
The Knock:
A rattling of bones rapping
A death tattoo.
Noise
Sitting still
Hands lazily at rest
In my lap
Eyes closed.
The sounds of the outside
Dull and incomprehensible.
Breathing slow, purposeful
But inside my head,
NOICE!
A thousand voices
A thousand images
Clamouring for attention
YouTube streaming on meth
Strings linked
By arbitrary associations
A revolving chaos
That I comprehend but must ignore.
Noise
Settles slowly until
The only sound, a butterfly flapping its wings
Soon to be an echo.
There are no mystic visages,
World changing insights, no enlightenment
Just calm.
It won’t last long, I know
My will is not that strong.
I must manage the return of the noise.
Patterns of neurons
Lighting up
A spreading fire
Of golden grass
To prevent the shock of
The mind-bending overload
Noise
Returning, loud and chaotic as ever
But I feel better,
Vanquishing the butterfly
For just a few moments.
The Edge Beyond our Existence
On the edge of the world:
An airless mountain top
A beach, nexus of the three elements
The black water of the abyssal plains.
Space.
Our world’s greatest frontier and beyond,
With interstellar envoys,
Time machines send us images
From the far edge of the Universe.
Older than our sun.
As the cosmos expands,
Our time is meaningless
Beyond our machines’ vision
Protogalaxies fade, wink out.
Being on the bow wave at the speed of light
Streaming into a theoretical null
Beyond which we will never see
Our existence ended, if for nothing else
By the red giant our sun will become
When the last of the stars burn and die
The ancient Universe waits
For the black holes to evaporate and explode
Releasing all their gathered energy
Into the void of pure radiation.
Well past Omega,
Infinity ends.
An edgeless non-existence.
The Big Table
She pulls herself as high as she can
On her tippy toes.
You just see parts of fingers
Then tight curls of black hair slowly
Slowly rises up
Her eyes just above the edge of the counter
Straining to see what is on the
Plane of smooth, mottled brown tiles:
Half loaf of bread,
A big jar of peanut butter,
A medium sized glass jar
Of a dark red jam.
She asks. “Whatcha you are doing?”
A slim man in his early thirties replies,
“Making a sandwich”
“For who?”
“You, part of your lunch.”
“What kind of jam?”
“The raspberry plum jam we made last summer.”
“Oh. I like that jam.”
Her Dad smiled “I know.”
“Can I have fruit snacks?”
“How about some red and green grapes.”
“Ok. Cold? It’s hot outside.”
“Of course. It is hot out. Have your lunch inside?”
“Hmmm, ok. At the big table?”
“If you promise not to leave
Any crumbs or sticky fingerprints.”
“I promise.” A big smile.
“I’ll put down a table mate.”
She climbs up the chair
Only shoulders above the table.
“Madame, luncheon is served.”
“I’m not a madame, I’m a girl,” she giggles.
“I will try to remember that my lady.”
She has already taken a bite out of the
Sourdough bread with the edges still on
Filled with silky smooth peanut butter
A sweet, and slightly tart jam
But the real big deal was
She was at the big table.
Swinging her legs
Enjoying her
PB&J
R W Stephens left the California coast with its fog, to be educated in Wisconsin, with its four seasons. There was a week as a guest in a rural village in central China. There was nuclear power and Walmart. An unintended interesting life. He isn’t published broadly but has been published in several Lothlorien Journal Poetry Anthologies. He is always curious. “Remember, curiosity found the Universe.”
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